Ion Dissonance Discuss Their Return to Form With Cursed

Montreal death metal/mathcore band Ion Dissonance have returned after a three-year hiatus with their fourth full-length effort, Cursed, which is out now via Century Media. The album exhibits a return to their original, crushing sound, with key elements that were missing on the band's previous release, 2007's Minus the Herd.

In an interview with Exclaim!, guitarist and founding member Antoine Lussier spoke about Ion Dissonance's return to their early style. "We don't want to change the sound of Ion Dissonance again," Lussier says. "Minus the Herd was just a thing we wanted to try and have fun doing. We wanted to have different producers and different ideas, but we don't want that anymore."

Lussier says he doesn't regret doing Minus the Herd album, despite the fact that the band were criticized for changing their sound. "I think what happened was a few years ago, there was controversy between death metal and hardcore and different types of music," he says. "We were touring with Skinless and Necrophagist, but we were also touring with more hardcore bands, so I think when we decided to do a slower album with more riffs and more rhythms, people were saying we got soft because it was different."

Speaking of Cursed, however, Lussier says, "We really followed our emotions and it's the same Ion sound we used to have six years ago. The musical direction at first was to play with the guitars and get a new direction. We started listening to our old songs and got new ideas. It really took a while to figure out where we were going exactly."

The end result of Cursed is chaotic, mathematical and brutal, with the band's signature unpredictable song structures, unorthodox time signatures and heavy drum blasts back in the fold, not to mention frenetic riffs and dynamic guitar leads.

"It's angry, it's faster, there are left turns and unexpected stuff, and it's more complicated than Minus the Herd," he explains. "We didn't think of Minus the Herd as a new direction for the band. We just wanted to write different types of songs and people thought we were going to stick to that style, but that wasn't the plan.

"After [Minus the Herd], we wanted to stick to the sound that we started with [on the 2005 album Solace] and we want to finish with it. I think we really got a good picture of what our sound is supposed to be. I'm not saying it's the best sound ever, it's just the best picture of Ion Dissonance we've taken so far."

Ion Dissonance are currently in the midst of a lengthy European tour, and you can see all the stops here on their MySpace.